Page 19 - Tsubomi

Bloom
Although Thailand’s local handicraft is praised of gorgeousness, it keeps simplicity and is popular among foreign tourists. Local craftsmen have strength in production skills and application of surrounding materials for handicraft creation. However, the production of same work style that is just to keep up the tourists’ demand causes the lack of creativity with contemporary appearance, which helps them export their products to the wider global markets. In addition, in the present era that local people move to urban for higher educational level and working in the city for higher income, local craftsmen remain only senior craftsmen. There is no successor that continues the work, and the creativity from new generation people is also scarce. It seems that the local handicraft is reaching a dead end.
For this reason, Lanna Culture & Crafts Association (LCCA) has participated in the Pacific Rim Project of design which is the cooperation between Tama Art University, Tokyo, Japan and Art Center College of Design, California, USA. The project’s objective was to take new generation people from these two universities and Thai university students from universities all over the country to visit and study the local handicraft in four provinces, namely Chiang Mai, Lamphun, Lampang and Phayao for two weeks. The project was conducted with the objective to closely survey the local cultural foundation including the study of community’s history and background, touching lifestyle enlightening the creation of handicraft in each local. Then, the students shall apply their experiences and inspirations from the study tour to create the product design under the concept of “Future Craft”. They were able to freely interpret their concepts but with sole target on creation of sustainability in income and lifestyle of local craftsmen. Here are the performance of experiences and inspirations from Thailand’s local cultural roots.
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